A-Living Smart City Services Co., Ltd. (HKG:3319) shareholders are no doubt pleased to see that the share price has bounced 31% in the last month, although it is still struggling to make up recently lost ground. But the last month did very little to improve the 52% share price decline over the last year.

Even after such a large jump in price, given about half the companies in Hong Kong have price-to-earnings ratios (or "P/E's") above 9x, you may still consider A-Living Smart City Services as a highly attractive investment with its 3.3x P/E ratio. Nonetheless, we'd need to dig a little deeper to determine if there is a rational basis for the highly reduced P/E.

With earnings that are retreating more than the market's of late, A-Living Smart City Services has been very sluggish. The P/E is probably low because investors think this poor earnings performance isn't going to improve at all. If you still like the company, you'd want its earnings trajectory to turn around before making any decisions. If not, then existing shareholders will probably struggle to get excited about the future direction of the share price.

Is There Any Growth For A-Living Smart City Services?

A-Living Smart City Services' P/E ratio would be typical for a company that's expected to deliver very poor growth or even falling earnings, and importantly, perform much worse than the market.

Retrospectively, the last year delivered a frustrating 27% decrease to the company's bottom line. Regardless, EPS has managed to lift by a handy 5.1% in aggregate from three years ago, thanks to the earlier period of growth. So we can start by confirming that the company has generally done a good job of growing earnings over that time, even though it had some hiccups along the way.

Turning to the outlook, the next three years should generate growth of 5.5% per year as estimated by the eleven analysts watching the company. That's shaping up to be materially lower than the 15% each year growth forecast for the broader market.

With this information, we can see why A-Living Smart City Services is trading at a P/E lower than the market. It seems most investors are expecting to see limited future growth and are only willing to pay a reduced amount for the stock.

The Key Takeaway

Even after such a strong price move, A-Living Smart City Services' P/E still trails the rest of the market significantly. It's argued the price-to-earnings ratio is an inferior measure of value within certain industries, but it can be a powerful business sentiment indicator.

As we suspected, our examination of A-Living Smart City Services' analyst forecasts revealed that its inferior earnings outlook is contributing to its low P/E. Right now shareholders are accepting the low P/E as they concede future earnings probably won't provide any pleasant surprises. Unless these conditions improve, they will continue to form a barrier for the share price around these levels.

There are also other vital risk factors to consider before investing and we've discovered 1 warning sign for A-Living Smart City Services that you should be aware of.

If these risks are making you reconsider your opinion on A-Living Smart City Services, explore our interactive list of high quality stocks to get an idea of what else is out there.

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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.